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From: Mark Hobley on 22 Jun 2010 20:34
Is there any open source software that can perform a low level format on
laser servo diskettes?

Mark.

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From: mjt on 23 Jun 2010 11:09
On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:34:04 +0000 (UTC)
Mark Hobley <markhobley(a)yahoo.donottypethisbit.co> wrote:

> Is there any open source software that can perform a low level format
> on laser servo diskettes?

Seems you've asked this back in 2007 - has it ever worked?

I doubt seriously anything new has come about ... I mean,
how much demand is there for utilities for floppy drives
in a laser servo drive? Your best bet is whatever was
suggested to you 3 years ago.

http://help.lockergnome.com/linux/format-44Mb-floppy-disk-laser-servo-drive--ftopict485308.html

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From: Mark Hobley on 24 Jun 2010 15:54
On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:09:48 -0500, mjt wrote:

> Seems you've asked this back in 2007 - has it ever worked?

Well. I used to be able to format these from Microsoft Windows '95, but I
can't remember what software I used. I think it was a dos application. I
have never been able to format these since migrating to Linux based
systems.

> I doubt seriously anything new has come about ... I mean, how much
> demand is there for utilities for floppy drives in a laser servo drive?

That is a different issue. This time I want to format a laser servo
diskette in a laser servo diskette drive. I am still looking for a
solution to this unresolved issue, and I am hoping that there is someone
in the world who knows how to do this. I have some disks that need a low
level format.

Mark.

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From: The Natural Philosopher on 24 Jun 2010 18:39
Mark Hobley wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:09:48 -0500, mjt wrote:
>
>> Seems you've asked this back in 2007 - has it ever worked?
>
> Well. I used to be able to format these from Microsoft Windows '95, but I
> can't remember what software I used. I think it was a dos application. I
> have never been able to format these since migrating to Linux based
> systems.
>
>> I doubt seriously anything new has come about ... I mean, how much
>> demand is there for utilities for floppy drives in a laser servo drive?
>
> That is a different issue. This time I want to format a laser servo
> diskette in a laser servo diskette drive. I am still looking for a
> solution to this unresolved issue, and I am hoping that there is someone
> in the world who knows how to do this. I have some disks that need a low
> level format.
>
> Mark.
>
why not simply write one?

From: Mark Hobley on 29 Jun 2010 05:38
On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:39:22 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> why not simply write one?

I used to write disk formatting routines back in the days of assembly
language and MSDOS, but I used to use the BIOS services to format the
disk sectors. I am still learning to program in Linux, and I am not a
proficient C programmer (I only know BASIC and assembly language), so I
am not sure of the complexity of formatting a laser servo diskette.

Is there a system call that does the low level formatting of the
diskettes?

I could knock up a for next loop around the format system call for each
of the sector numbers, if that is all that is involved.

(The driver is complete isn't it, and does have formatting capability?)

I don't need to populate the sectors with any data. I will just use mkfs
for that.

Mark.

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